BPM to MS confusion...???

C

Chew_Bear

New member
God Damn It...Just when I thought I was making a lot of progression in my music making...Music Production as a whole just threw me a big 'curve ball' and now I am all confused and frustrated...

As if learning music theory, sound design and mixing weren't enough already...First time coming across the theory/principle of having to convert BPM to MS. I have never heard of this technique/principle before and no one has never mentioned it to me...I am all confused...

Why the hell do I need to learn how to convert bpm to milliseconds and why does it matter....?

How do I do this...? Where am I supposed to use this...? Anytime I am working with time based effects/parameters/settings...?

How does it help my music...? Does it make it more 'musical'...?

Is this something all producers have to learn....? Is it genre specific (EDM/dance only)...?

I mean, can't I just set time/milliseconds parameters based on what I think sounds the best and not have to worry about an 'exact number'...?
uuuugggghhhhhhhhh...DAMN YOU MUSIC PRODUCTION GODS...!!! Help....??? :shame:
 
A lot of delays and such will have a time based option that syncs with your DAW (so instead of choosing ms you're picking 1/4's or 1/8's etc.). If you don't have it though just turn on the metronome and hit solo and use your ears to get it about where you want it. Shouldn't take too long to sync it in with the metronome. If it's not exact that's not a big deal, a ballpark time sync should be fine, maybe an preferable.
 
Yeah, you only "need" this for some time-based fx such as delay and, say, compression release times and such. But as said, you can just usually set it by ear - plus there are plenty of calculators and tables online to find the "correct" values if you want to be exact.
 
Yeah this used to be more relevant in the olden days. Like when you used a delay that couldn't be synced to your BPM, you had to set the timing in milliseconds.
Fancy timestretching and pitching algorhythms didn't exist, so it can into play when you were working with samples and trying to get pitches and tempo's to match.. or recordings that had a delay. Like I used to know that if I sampled something from my recordplayer, I'd have to cut off like 333ms of silence at the start for it to sync up properly.

Nowadays all that stuff happens automatically, everything syncs up neatly so I wouldn't worry about it..
 
I wouldn't waste brain power on this

Just use a calculator if you need to figure it out:
Google BPM to Millisecond calculator and there's loads of them to choose from. (I find the dvfugit one easiest to use)

It's not something worth "learning" in my opinion!

Oh and YES, you absolutely can set it to whatever sounds good to you. In fact, that should always be the case for anything musical whatever anyone tells you.

I find setting them a few ms off from the exact timing can be fun.
 
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